


Accepting Reality is One of the Hardest Things to Do

by LettersofSky



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Gen, Mentions of Equius Zahhak - Freeform, Non-Binary Gamzee, eridan ampora - Freeform, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26025700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LettersofSky/pseuds/LettersofSky
Summary: Well, no. ‘Realize’ implied they weren’t already aware of that fact beforehand and that was the farthest thing from the truth.Gamzee had been very much aware of the fact that none of their friends really liked them or wanted much of anything to actually do with them for a very, very long time. They weren’t stupid, they knew how tell when they weren’t wanted, their lusus was never around after all, of course they knew when they weren’t wanted.They supposed that seven sweeps was just when they really accepted the fact.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Accepting Reality is One of the Hardest Things to Do

They realize none of their friends like them when they’re seven sweeps old.

Well, no. ‘Realize’ implied they weren’t already aware of that fact beforehand and that was the farthest thing from the truth. 

Gamzee had been very much aware of the fact that none of their friends really liked them or wanted much of anything to actually do with them for a very, very long time. They weren’t stupid, they knew how tell when they weren’t wanted, their lusus was never around after all, of course they knew when they weren’t wanted.

They supposed that seven sweeps was just when they really accepted the fact.

Seven sweeps was an important time for a Troll afterall, not the most important but starting to build up to it. The age when a Troll was supposed to start shedding those old wrigglerish ways and start preparing themselves to be whatever the Empire required of them.

For Gamzee... that hadn’t meant anything to them.

They didn’t want to be what the Empire wanted of them. They knew that. As hard as it was to know anything clearly when they’d rotted their pan so thoroughly on a substance nobody had ever bothered to tell them they shouldn’t imbibe in until they were already well and hooked.

Knowing things was hard.

But they knew they didn’t want to be what the Empire wanted of them.

That’s the first step to accepting their friends don’t actually want anything to do with them.

Gamzee’d been talking to Equius for sweeps, daily messages that seemed to lead nowhere and everywhere and never made any sense to them. The other Troll didn’t like them, had made that abundantly clear time and time over, he wanted them to be something they weren’t, something that set their teeth on edge just to think about.

The Indigo wanted a Gamzee that they just couldn’t be and never listened when they tried to tell him that, tried to put into words that made sense that they just didn’t think they were any better than anybody else, that they didn’t want to be any better than anybody else. 

They hadn’t known how to tell him anything.

So they’d stopped telling him anything.

It was hard, at first. To stop reaching out and responding to the other Troll when he messaged them. It was hard to not fall into spending his nights exchanging messages no matter how much they hurt them at times.

It was harder still to see Equius get the idea that they weren’t going to respond to him. To see questions that dripped with hurt confusion, go unanswered, trail off and, eventually, halt completely.

The complete silence that followed Equius’ last message was something they’d expected but hadn’t known how to prepare for. Losing the one Troll they spoke to often enough to be routine was… hard for Gamzee.

But things were supposed to be hard when Trolls were growing.

They were.

If they just weathered this out then things would be fine.

A lie they’d been telling themself for years.

When SeaGoat-Dad would leave for cycles at a time. When their friends made any and every excuse to never see them. When their friends would insult and jab and pick them apart to nothing.

A lie that had been unravelling as lies always did.

Things weren’t going to be fine. Not like this.

Not just sitting back and letting things continue around them.

Accepting their friends didn’t actually like them had been hard; a series of requests and offers to spend time with the others cast aside with insults and the firm denials that only served to further tear down their hopes that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t as alone as they knew they were.

Eventually they stopped reaching out and resigned themself to the beach; the shifting shoreline, the ebb and flow of the tide and the untainted quiet of the night.

Eventually, it got easier to deal with. 

Eventually, they stopped lying to themself and accepted that it never got easier to deal with.

Eventually the contacts in their Trollian got shorter and shorter until it was just two handles that hadn’t bothered to delete them yet.

Eventually seven sweeps became eight. Eight sweeps nine and Gamzee Makara survived the Trails to the surprise of all that knew they had taken them to survive them.

Sobering up was hard after sweeps of being addicted. But they managed well enough.

It left them irritated though, like a bone-deep itch they could never scratch no matter how they tore into their arms to get to it, ever-present and eternally stuck with them. It made them snappish at times, sharper and easier to bristle and easier to annoy, something that combined in odd ways with their usual placid passivity and fractured think pan. Thinking was hard and that made them irritated, dealing with the other subjuggulators was hard and that made them irritated, interacting with anyone other than their instructors was hard and that made them irritated.

Being irritated more often than not was something that became their new norm and they dealt with that as best they could.

They settled into being a subjuggulator with a great deal of difficulty.

They settled into being a soldier for the Empire better.

The subjuggulators wanted them to conform to what they wanted of them, to twist and bend into someone else. Gamzee had already let one bridge decay into breaking because someone had wanted them to be somebody else, letting another one go the same way was not something they were opposed to.

Gamzee Makara would never be a good subjuggulator, a fact that served to insult their still breathing ancestor to the point of being constantly sent away from the Church’s Ship.

That was how they came back to the awareness of one Eridan Ampora.

He’d grown since the last time Gamzee had seen him, not as tall as Gamzee but broader in the shoulder and overall far more solid and imposing. Gamzee had never filled out like a Purple-Blood was supposed to, they’d gained the towering height made worse by the spiral of their horns but they remained slim and gangly, skin tight against their bones and form looking like it was about to fracture in on itself at a moment’s notice.

Eridan had grown into a proper Violet, broad and commanding with a tilt to his chin that informed everyone around him that he was the most important of them all.

Gamzee had expected for him to ignore them, as he had back on Alternia. They hadn’t expected the Violet to attach himself to them for seemingly no reason they could understand.

Eridan Ampora had never really been a friend, not before, he’d been too absorbed with the feud between sea-dwellers and land-dwellers, too busy with his quadrant dramas, to bother much with them, even when they did come across each other on the shore line those few times. 

The fact that he had decided that while they were on the same ship together they should catch up and talk about things was odd, it was hard for them to adjust to.

They were used to silence, to being stuck in their own head and being their own company. They couldn’t figure out what Eridan wanted of them.

It was nice though, they’d forgotten what company could be like. Forgotten it could ease the sharp static of their head and provide them something to focus on. Forgotten what it was like to actively care about someone else and how and what they were doing, to feel simple joy at hearing achievements and sorrow at learning of failings.

They’d forgotten a number of things in the wake of accepting that none of their friends had wanted them around when they were seven sweeps old.

They don’t tell Eridan that, they don’t tell anyone that.

They don’t tell anyone anything.

Gamzee’s thoughts are theirs for the keeping, no one else was allowed to know them, to pick them apart again and tell them they were wrong to think them.

They cared little for what others thought they should be, what they should think. Others left. At the end of everything Gamzee was the only one that had to deal with themself. 

Gamzee suspected that Eridan dealt with something similar; expectations placed on him that he didn’t care to try to meet. 

They heard Trolls talk on the ship. About the Ampora that wasn’t matching with the Bloodline name. 

They suspected that Eridan heard them too. 

Gamzee made a game out of it. Something silly to pass the time and try to take some of the tension out of Eridan’s shoulders. They traded things they’d heard other Trolls say about them with the other, from things they couldn’t change about their stature, to things they didn’t care to change about their personality, to things that were just so stupid they were amusing. 

Once they’d traded “he’s not fit to captain” for “they laugh wrong” and got a chuckle out of the Violet which was much better than they had been expecting. 

It had felt something like a real friendship and Gamzee had tucked it deep their bloodpusher to keep to themself. 

Which was why when old handles they hadn’t spoken to in sweeps reached out to talk to them, saying they’d heard they of their existence from Eridan, it hurt just a little bit. 

Gamzee hadn’t responded at first, let unassigned grey and indigo blue sit silent and ignored, needing to focus on figuring out how this development made them feel. 

It felt like a betrayal at first; the stray thought that Eridan had only bothered with them because Karkat and Equius had mentioned them in some odd instance of passing, that he’d only bothered with them long enough to figure out that they’d kept their Troll handle the same all these sweeps. 

It had hurt them to think that. To think that they hadn’t learned anything at all and they were still trying to call someone that didn’t actually want anything to do with them a friend. 

Gamzee took to ignoring Eridan for a few cycles, leaving themself time and space to think on things as they avoided the Troll in the corridors and on missions. 

Lonely was a familiar feeling but at least they knew how to handle it. 

Eridan is a stubborn thing though and where Gamzee was content to accept things weren’t like they thought them and move on, Eridan Ampora was a desperate, angry thing and wouldn’t accept things so easily. He was prepared to fight with scratching claws and snapping fangs and get to the bottom of why Gamzee had suddenly shifted their attitude towards him. 

Admitting to what they’d known for sweeps to another Troll had been hard. Admitting they were scared of it happening again was harder. 

Trying to give Eridan the chance to do otherwise was harder still. 

They agreed to it though, quiet and hesitant and unable to put everything into proper words for the Violet but trying anyway. 

It had still taken them another few cycles to respond to the messages on their Trollian. To push through old hurts and give them the chance to not do them again. 

It’d been hard to accept that their friends didn’t want anything to do with them when they were seven sweeps.

It was harder to accept that maybe that had changed in the sweeps since. 


End file.
